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"You can call me Liz if you want"

"Frankly speaking, I don't like 'Liz' any better than 'Bettie,'" he admitted. "But don't sweat it. That's just me. You aren't angry?"

"Everything is okay, mister."

"Don't call me 'mister.' Call me Pete."

"Okay... Pete."

"That bothers you?" he immediately asked, noticing an uncertainty in her voice. "You think I'm trying to seem like one of the boys, as if I still were young? It's unnatural for you to call such an old fart 'Pete?'"

"You don't look at all like an old... umm..."

"Don't lie to me, Bettie. I know perfectly well how a 50-year-old looks when you're 17."

"Actually, I'm 18 already."

"Is that so?" grinned Pete.

"Yes," Bettie answered, thinking aloud. "I turned 18 last week,and I decided that I have had enough. Enough of a perman
ently drunk dad, enough of a mother who dad turned into a dumb animal long ago, enough of a brother all the time trying to pinch my butt or to watch me change clothes–enough of the whole nice little town of Bricksville, let it burn in hell. I broke my piggy bank, packed a backpack and went to the road. By evening I was already 200 miles away from home and I hope never to come any closer to it again."

"And where are you going?"

"Dunno. Maybe Sacramento or Frisco. Or maybe I'll find a waitress job in some roadside diner this side of the Rockies. I don't have any definite plans. The main thing is to get far away from Bricksville and then we'll see."

"Can you do anything? Well, except housework."

"Not much," she admitted. "But I'm a fast learner.”

"Have you at least graduated from high school?"

"Yes... and my grades weren't too bad. Though I hope that when Bricksville burns in hell, the fire gets the school first."

"I see," Palmer nodded. It suddenly seemed to him that the girl was looking at him with hope and he hastened to dispel it.

"I'm asking for no reason. Don't think that I can offer you a job. For that matter, I'm unemployed myself now."

"But your ride is cool," mistrustfully noted Bettie.

"I've been unemployed for only 74 hours. 74 and a half now."

"Bad luck for you, I guess," she said sympathetically.

"It was bad luck for me when I was born."

"Just the same, I don't think everything is so bad," she carefully offered after a pause.

"At your age I thought so, too. When you're 18, it seems that you'll be young forever. But you'll hardly have time to sigh before you're 36, and then 54. Anyway, you start to die much earlier. Did you know, that after 25, a human loses a hundred thousand brain cells per day? After 40 this process sharply accelerates and after 50 the brain starts to dry out noticeably. There's no arguing with the fucking science... We try to deceive ourselves too long. At 40, we try to tell ourselves that we're the same as always, though actually we've been sliding downhill for a long time. And at 50 you notice that you aren't just sliding but accelerating with the wind in your ears. Hold the handrail, ladies and gentlemen, the next stops are Arthritis! Sclerosis! Cancer! Infarct! Stroke! Parkinson's! Alzheimer's! Do you understand, Bettie?"

"I think I do," the girl answered without any real confid
ence, "but..."

"You don't understand a damned thing. And then, when you realize that ahead of you is only misery and after that–dark
ness and void, you start to look back at your past, searching for at least some meaning. But there isn't any, Bettie. Have you ever thought about how the life of an ordinary man is absolutely awful?"

"Maybe in Bricksville."

"Forget your fucking Bricksville! As if in New York, Paris, or Venice things are different! Every day a man goes to work, doing some nonsense like advertising chewing gum or selling canned cat food. He may pretend that it interests him, or honestly admit to himself that he hates his idiotic job –it doesn't change things a bit. For all his life, beginning in school, he diligently works like a squirrel in a cage to provide himself with money. What does he spend this money on? On food which several hours later is flushed down a toilet bowl, on buying things whose main purpose is to show how much money was spent on them, on vacation trips where he is baked on a beach like a pig in an oven or runs like a sheep in a herd following the guide and shooting views which were already photographed 300 million times by other sheep. Work and other routine activities leave him no more than a couple of free hours a day, and how does he dispose of them? He kills them watching stupid TV shows or playing poker. Then, if he is in the mood, he fucks his wife and if not—he just falls asleep immediately. In the morning, sleepy and angry, he again goes to work. And this goes on day after day. Somehow, he believes that all this is just a prelude to some bright and fine future–until it becomes obvious that the only future for him is a wooden box with decaying meat which will be pushed in the ground or into an oven, far enough from the eyes and noses of those who face the same fate later. And nothing will remain of him, absolutely nothing. Even the cat food which he sold all his life won't be named after him."

"Children will remain," Bettie objected.

"Sure, and from them–their children, and from those–their... Don't you see that all this is one big nothing? A million zeros added together makes a zero!"

"Maybe if you had children, things wouldn't seem so gloomy."

"I didn't say I don't have any–I said I don't have a daughter."

"So you have a son?"

"Yes. He's twenty years old and recently he got a job in a supermarket."

"Is he troubled about anything?"

"Seems to me he's happy."

"Then everything is okay with him?"

"Completely, if you don't count his Down syndrome."

"Oh... I'm sorry."

"That's all because of a guy named Gene Chromosome," said Palmer. "Have you read Kuttner?"

"Who?"

"Kuttner... or Gardner, I always mix them up. One wrote mysteries, the other science fiction. So the sci-fi writer had a series about Hogbens. Really funny stories. Hogbens are mutants, powerful almost like Superman, but living like typical bumpkins. When the grandfather tells the kid about mutations, the kid says: "I got a notion some furrin feller named Gene Chromosome had done it." Basically, I don't know whether we ourselves understand much more than that. There weren't any such birth defects in my family or in my wife's–if she didn't lie as usual."

"Sounds like you don't get along with her too well.”

"For the past 74 hours I've been trying to understand why I endured the bitch for the last 20 years."

"Is her name Bettie?"

"What? My God, no. Her name is Margaret, and, God help me, I like the name despite hating that stupid fat shrill hysterical bitch. I even married her partly because I liked her name. Very romantic, huh, Bettie? I liked her name more than her boobs. Though, to tell the truth, her boobs were pretty good back then–she wasn't fat yet. She stopped watching her weight after Max's birth. How do you like this idea–naming a moron 'Max?' She would even have named him Sylvester!"

Bettie said nothing.

"And all these 20 years," continued Pete, "she nagged at me, claiming Max was my fault because I fucked her when I was drunk. Damn her, she drank more than I did that night! She wanted fucking romance–a dinner with candles and champagne. She put away one and a half bottles alone. I drank only a little–I actually don't like champagne. At the end she was laughing nonstop and tried to get her foot under the table into my fly. We weren't married yet, but neither of us bothered with precautions. Shit, that's not romantic! As though there could be anything romantic in fucking anyway... Did you ever fuck, Bettie? Never mind, you don't have to answer that. We got married soon, without knowing that she was pregnant. And in just a few months I found out about her temper. But it turned out she was pregnant and I thought that was affecting her and after the birth she would calm down... And then Max was born and everything really went to hell. She handed him over to a state home and then regularly blamed me for it. By the way, I never saw Max since then. She went to see him, but I never did. He's disgusting to me. But, still, she handed him over herself. Every time I got fed up with her moaning, I told her to bring him back home. She said she would do exactly that and went off to blubber in her room. That's how it always ended. Then she started hitting the bottle. Once she even was put in the hospital with an alcoholic psychosis. But, unfortunately, they released her and she came home."

Palmer fell silent.

"Listen, mister... " Bettie began shyly.

"Pete!"

"Okay, listen, Pete... what happened 74 hours ago? You didn't...like... kill her?"

"A good question!" laughed Palmer. "No, don't think I have. Though it would be worth it, I swear to God."

"What do you mean...'you don't think?'"

"Well, maybe she died of a heart attack when she found out she wouldn't see me or my money any more."

"Well, I'm not a lawyer, but probably you still have to pay her alimony."

"What fucking alimony, Bettie? Did you forget that I'm unemployed with no income now? You want to know what happened 74 hours ago? Already almost 75... Well, I'll tell you. That bitch whom I even don't want to call by her beautiful name was lucky that it didn't happen in our home. Otherwise, maybe I would have killed her. But it happened at my job. I didn't change my place of work for 30 years, Bettie. It changed itself–at first it was a small firm selling paint, then it was bought by a company which had a network of hardware stores, then the company was acquired by a corporation, and now all this is merged into a huge conglomerate which makes and sells thousands of things–from machines for construction work to toilet paper. And 26 of these 30 years I spent under one man–William T. Gills. At first I was his ordinary employee. Then he noticed he could work me like a horse pulling a plow and made me his deputy. I was young and naive, so I was damned proud–oh really, I'm making a career, ad
vancing past other employees who are older and have more experience! I went all out to justify Mr. Gills' trust. By the way, I always called him 'Mr. Gills,' and he called me 'Pete,' though he was a year younger than me–but when he was just 25, he had a half-bald head and glasses, so he looked older. Anyway, this son of a bitch, of course, used my eagerness totally to his advantage. I can imagine how he chuckled to himself. I did all the work for him, he received praise from upper management, and I got nothing. Then he was promoted–do you think I got his position? Hell no–he already understood how useful I could be to him. He dragged me with him and again I became his deputy, only at the new level. And so it went all these years. This bastard used me and I always played the supporting role. Once I tried to call him 'Willie' and he said nothing, but looked at me in such a way that I immediately returned to 'Mr. Gills'. The whole following week I felt ashamed and worthless remembering it... Recently he was the general manager of the regional office of the corporation, and I was, accordingly, his deputy. And so three days ago two events happened. First, I turned 50. And second, Gills got one more promotion–to the very top, to the head office on the East Coast. There were rumors about it earlier, but he liked to keep matters secret till the last moment. And I had a feeling that this time he wouldn't drag me with him–and I was really sick of looking at his smug face for such a long time. I thought maybe this time I'd leave his shadow at last and become the general manager. So this bastard called me to his office... you, probably, think that he gave me the sack, and someone else got the job? No, Bettie, I got it. The top of my 30-year career. "Congrats on your anniversary with the company, Pete," he said. "And I have a gift for you–this office is now yours." And do you think I was happy? Fucking shit, like hell I was happy! Because I suddenly understood that it was the end. The last promotion in my life. I would leave this office only to retire. For 30 years I ran like a squirrel in a cage, and for what? The same fucking vanity, foolish and senseless fuss. I would keep on doing the same work from then on until they kicked my ass out to make room for someone younger. The salary would increase, but the headaches would increase, too–I couldn't work Gills style, foisting everything off on deputies. And while I stood there, thinking about it and listening to that whistle with which the train approaches the Cancer or Alzheimer's stations–guess what Gills thought, looking at my sour expression? This fucking son of a bitch got the idea that I felt sad about parting from him! "So it goes, Pete," he said consoling me, "it's sad for me to leave you, too, but in the new position I need somebody younger." And here I did what I dreamed about for many years. I smashed his face with all force I had. I think I knocked out at least five of his teeth, maybe even more. I wouldn't be surprised if I broke his jaw. I was beside myself with rage. When I hit him, he plopped in his chair which rolled back until it hit a wall. He sat and looked at me with bulging eyes, glasses half off, and blood on his chin. I cursed him for about four minutes. If his chair hadn't been on castors, I would probably have continued beating him. But he was too far from me and, besides, there was a table between us, so I was limited to words. I don't even remember what I said, but never in my life did I swear like that. Then I went out, sat in my car, and drove west. Before leaving the city, though, I stopped twice–once at my bank to withdraw my money and to close my accounts, and the second time at the post office to write and mail a letter to Margaret. I told her what I thought of her. Then I sent some more letters like that–to all addresses I could remember."